Piyush Jha
Piyush Jha’s Mumbaistan has “3 explosive crime thrillers’ as a descriptor, and a blurb from Ekta Kapoor that promises “entertainment, entertainment and entertainment.” All things considered, both sets of promises have been kept.
The first story – Bomb Day – has a set of stereotypes that one would associate with the subject – a prostitute, a cop, terrorists from across the border, a man with a past who is manipulated most of the time. To me, this was the slowest of the three novellas, but that’s only a relative measure, since you’d not be bored. The plot does keep moving, but there is a sense of predictability and cliches that seem to weigh it down. However, this is still a good “behind-the-scenes” look at the terrorists who hold a city to ransom and the law enforcers who try to prevent them from prevailing.
The second – Injectionwala – is a little more unique mainly thanks to the subject (organ trading) and the way the characters have been developed, with an importance given to their back stories that in a way, justifies their emotions and actions. It is only the raciness of the narrative – the vigilante and the cop who play a lively cat-and-mouse game – that prevents the reader from trying to outguess the author.
Coma Man, the third story, is the longest, but manages to keep the reader on edge throughout its 90 pages. This was my favourite, not just because of the premise of a man waking up from a coma after more than a couple of decades and trying to discover his past, but because of the sheer pace of the narrative and its various twists and turns.
The three stories are not connected, except for the fact that they’re all set in Mumbai, but (spoiler) I have to wonder whether all the antagonists being women is a coincidence. The language, while resorting to over-dramatisation on a few occasions – is definitely better than the grammar-less concoctions that are being churned out in the name of ‘Indian writing’. The book does justice to the frenetic pace of the city it is named after, and is ideal reading material for a journey of a few hours.
